Shark and pilot fish
Tuesday
Few poems capture our current White House better that Herman Melville’s “Maldive Shark,” a chilling lyric that seems to be about the shark but, upon further examination, is really about the accompanying pilot fish. It captures the way that various Donald Trump enablers profit from his incessant attacks.
And profit they certainly do, whether with regard to the environment, public education, consumer protection, financial regulations, public housing, tax policy, or federal judges. They have but to lead the shark to his prey and watch safety from within his serrated teeth while he munches away.
The poem only gets wrong—about actual pilot fish as well as our own—not partaking of the feast. Real pilot fish feast on the scraps, sometimes even cleaning the shark’s teeth (a good metaphor for toadying), and ours please powerful friends while feathering their nests (Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, Betsy DeVos, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, the Trump siblings, Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, Ben Carson). They act as the “eyes and brains” to “the dotard lethargic and dull,” the latter aptly describing our lazy president. “Gorgonian head” fits as well.
But we don’t all tune into “Pilot Fish Week.” The “pale ravener of horrible meat” hogs the publicity as he does the poem. The pilot fish like it that way.
The Maldive Shark
By Herman Melville
About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there find a haven when peril’s abroad,
An asylum in jaws of the Fates!
They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat—
Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.